bell cow
n.— «But the goal is always the same, finish early and often. That, meanwhile, is the job of the “bell cow,” a term for the team’s lead runner who’s job it is to jump out early and interrupt another team’s pack.» —“Cross country siblings running the pack” by Justin L. Oliver in Texas A&M University North Texas e-News Nov. 4, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
Aubrey in Waco, Texas, says her mother used to warn the kids against contracting honkus of the bonkus, a fanciful name for a contagious disease. This colloquial term probably comes from the words bonk and konk, meaning “to hit” or...